I look out over the grain of the water, forgetting all about her, and a pang goes through me. I’m thinking miserably about the school, Twisse and Spiena, that each passing triangular wafer of water is separating me from. From whom each passing etc. I see the Edek’s eyes glare like two cold suns—they dilate at me through holes ripped in the air, and I gasp with fear and unhappiness.

*

Jil Punkinflake tells me how Thrushchurl had been institutionalized after he set fire to a wing of the Embalmer’s College.

“He kept seeing mice everywhere. Of course, there were a few. But the ones he saw were in the corners of his eyes, not in the rooms. I think he set the fire to get rid of them.

“I wasn’t in attendance at the time,” he adds. “Anyway, we should keep an eye on him ...”

He looks at me seriously.

“Just in case ...” he adds, and his face goes a little irregular. “I don’t mistrust him—I’m just thinking of the safety of the unit.”

Thrushchurl has taken up residence under some stairs; his long knees and shanks protrude into the light. I’m looking, not watching. He’s removed his silk hat; his backswept hair, split up the middle, is still pressed into a winglike pair of pancakes. The yellow gleam of his fluorescent grin is intermittently exposed, while he turns this way and that, his back to the wall, straightening out blankets, and pausing motionless from time to time, peering into a corner, or at the line where the wall meets the floor.

As Thrushchurl readies himself for sleep, he spreads his oarlike hands over the fabric of his blankets until they’re perfectly flat, smudging the bypasser air with that somber rag of song that has taken up residence in his mouth. Often, he barely articulates the syllables; you get a melody of vowels only. I don’t think he knows he’s singing it.

“Little mice, little mice,

Even cats have got their lice,

Run-run, run get yourself away—”

“Dead as cinders, grey as ashes,

Cold as ice, now its eye flashes,

Too too late to get away—”

*

Who else has had anything to say about Meqhasset? Silichieh tells me the island’s whole interior is haunted.

“It’s supposed all to be ruins from another war, hundreds of years ago. Whole forests have sprung up from spilled blood.”